It’s time once again to give away some cool robot prizes to celebrate the 10th birthday of GoRobotics! If you didn’t win last month’s contest, have no fear, try again this month (and the month after!). We have some great robot prizes from our sponsors, SuperDroid Robots, Apress, Pololu and Trossen Robotics.

There are three ways of entering this month’s contest:

1. Simply comment on this post and tell us why you should win.
2. Follow GoRobotics on Twitter and leave a comment below telling us your Twitter username.
3. Retweet the following, “Enter @GoRobotics.net’s 10 Year Birthday Robot Giveaway http://wp.me/pgDpL-kM“. Leave a comment when you do.

YOU CAN DO ALL THREE (three comments) TO INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING!

Winners will be chosen at random. Three winners will be chosen and the first winners will get his/her choice of the prizes, second place gets second choice and third place gets whatever is left over! The contest ends FEBRUARY 28th, 2010 at 12AM EST. Comments are moderated to prevent spam. Your comment won’t show up till the moderator has approved it. Here are this month’s prizes:

1st Place Prize – Penguin Robot (donated by Trossen Robotics) worth $200 USD.

The Penguin Robot by Parallax is a unique walking robot. Using two micro servos and precisely CNC machined parts, the robot can walk via a “tilt-stride action” gait. The cute little penguin comes equipped with a digital compass to track its heading, two photoresistors for sensing ambient light and light tracking, and two infrared emitters and a detector for obstacle avoidance. The Penguin Robot comes with a 7-segment LED indicator and a piezo buzzer for making sound. This is a great kit for getting into robotics, and you should set aside about 4 hours to assemble him.

2nd Place Prize – Build Your Own CNC Machine, Extreme NXT, and LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0: The Kings Treasure (donated by Apress) worth $75 USD

The second place prize is a whole raft of excellent books from Apress.

Build Your Own CNC Machine is the book to get you started in fabricating your own parts. CNC expert Patrick Hood-Daniel and best-selling author James Kelly team up to show you how to construct your very own CNC machine for about $500 – $1000 USD. Then they go on to show you how to use it, how to document your designs in Computer-Aided Design programs, and how to output your designs as specifications and tool paths that feed into the CNC machine, controlling it as it builds whatever parts your imagination can dream up.

Extreme NXT shows you how to advance the NXT with more than 45 exciting projects that include creating a cool magic wand that writes words in thin air, building a remotely guided vehicle, and constructing sophisticated robots that can sense color, light, temperature, and more. All projects are explained with easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions, so you’ll be able to create them successfully whether you’re a novice or an expert. This book also shows you how to expand the programming software and use the alternative language NXC.

LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0: The King’s Treasure is written for children ages 10 and up who want to learn to design, build, and operate robots using LEGO’s immensely popular MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 robotics kit. The book leads readers through a series of five projects centered on an engaging story line. It can be read by kids alone, or it can provide the spark for a wonderful series of parent/child activities.

3rd Place Prize – 2x 24V 195 RPM Gear Motors (donated by Super Droid Robots) worth $40 USD

These powerful 24V motors donated by Super Droid Robots will kick-start your next robot project. They are high-quality motors with steel gears (not cheap plastic), and used in Super Droid’s All-terrain robots. They use a 1:27 gear reduction and have an amazing 12 kgf-cm of torque. That means they could lift a 26 lb (12 kg) load using a 1 cm lever arm! They are rated for < 250 mA of drive current. Get started building something cool!

Update: Congratulations to our winners, Gerry Blondeaux, Dalton Caughell, and Matt Thouvenot.

Rules/Regulations/Fine Print:

• To enter the contest, you must comment on this post.
• Giveaway ends February 28th, at 12AM EST (9PM PST)
• One prize package per winner.
• No purchase is necessary to enter the contest – it’s free!>
• Everyone is eligible, but shipping is free to only those in the Continental US – if you are outside this area, you will have to pay for shipping.
• PayPal is required to pay for shipping if you live out of the Continental US
• Winners will be contacted via email supplied in the comment form.
• You have 48 hrs to respond to the email and choose your prize package.
• GoRobotics.net makes NO WARRANTY or GUARANTEES about these prizes.
• GoRobotics.net can change the rules WHENEVER IT WANTS.

Special Thanks to Our Sponsors! BUY STUFF FROM THEM:

It’s time to kick start our 10 Years of GoRobotics celebration! Our first giveaway features some great prizes from our sponsors, SuperDroid Robots, Apress, Pololu and Trossen Robotics. Entering this month’s contest will be simple. Here’s what you need to do: simply comment on this post and tell us your favorite robot. Winners will be chosen at random. Three winners will be chosen and the first winners will get his/her choice of the prizes, second place gets second choice and third place gets whatever is left over! The contest ends JANUARY 31st, 2010 at 12AM EST. Comments are moderated to prevent spam. Your comment won’t show up till the moderator has approved it. Here are this month’s prizes: First Prize Package – Scribbler Robot (donated by Trossen Robotics) – worth $99 The Scribbler Robot is a complete robotics platform designed for ages 8 and up. It comes with a full Parallax Basic Stamp 2 processor, many sensors, and intuitive software for getting started quickly. Perfect for beginners and intermediate builders.

Second Prize Package – Micro Maestro 6-channel USB Servo Controller + Practical Arduino Book (donated by Pololu and Apress) – worth $25 + $35 Pololu’s Micro Maestro 6-channel USB servo controller allows you to control six separate servos from your PC via USB, TTL serial from a microcontroller, and allows basic scripts to be executed on the controller itself. It also incorporates general I/O. This controller is one of the best controllers on the market, with 0.25us resolution with built-in speed and acceleration control. Practical Arduino: Cool Projects for Open Source Hardware, by Jonathan Oxer and Hugh Blemings will tech you how to create your own Arduino-based designs, learn the arduino programming language, and will guide you through many practical projects from home automation to test equipment. This book is for hobbyists and developers interested in physical computing using a low-cost, easy-to-learn platform. Third Prize Package – Remote Control Robot Construction Set (donated by SuperDroid Robots) – worth $46 The Tamiya Remote Control Robot Construction kit provides parts for wheeled remote control robot. Twin-motor gearbox, crank-axle gearbox, remote control box, ball caster, tires, universal arm, and other parts are included. The control box has 4 channels and enables control of 4 different movements by adding separately available gearboxes. It comes with instructions for building several different robots. Keep reading for the complete rules, and TO ENER THE GIVEAWAY! (more…)

Dvice and SciFi are sponsoring a Steampunk Cylon Contest. Your challenge is to design a steampunk style Cylon and submit a drawing or photo to SciFi before March 20th. Winners will win various Battlestar Galactica prizes.

The Cylons were created by the people of the Twelve Colonies. Intelligent robots, they were used as slaves and soldiers to fight humanity’s wars. But the Cylons became sentient and they rebelled. Man and machine fought to a bloody stalemate, then the Cylons withdrew to a remote region of space. A truce between the Twelve Colonies and the Cylons lasted for 40 tense and silent years. Then, on the 40th anniversary, a stunning blonde — a Cylon in human form — met the human envoy… moments before the Cylons vaporized the station and launched a genocidal attack on the Twelve Colonies.

Build on! So say we all.

David is probably going to hate me for this, but an email just popped up on the Robotics Society of America mailing list from David Calkins, saying:

So, The All-Japan 3kg Sumo Tournament is Dec 21st in Tokyo.

Fujisoft gave me 2 seats to go, all expenses, … [and] I’m giving away the tix.

Want ‘em?

You gotta win ‘em.

In order to win the tickets, you have to mail your completed Sumo robot to David, where he will compete them in a normal Sumo tournament on December 6th. The two best robots from the tournament will win tickets to Japan!

For more details contact David directly. If you don’t currently have a Sumo ‘bot, get to building! Or, buy a kit and soup it up!

Update: This just in from David, “Luis Reyna and Alex Eisner won the sumo contest, and tix to Japan”. Congratulations to Luis and Alex! Let us know how the trip goes.

Trossen Robotics is sponsoring a robot building contest with some great prizes! The contest, which runs through the end of December, challenges entrants to building something cool. Something that will “wow” the judges. Other than that (and using electricity) the field is pretty wide open.

Projects will be judged on the “wow factor”, ingenuity, creativity, and on (the dreaded) documentation. Prizes are:

3rd Place: A Roboquad from WowWee Toys (~$60 value)

2nd Place: A Robosapien RS Media from WowWee Toys (~$180 value)

1st Place: A Pleo Dinosaur from Ugobe! ($350 value)

So, all you robot builders out there should get to work! When you’ve submitted your projects, how about leaving a comment and letting us know, and we’ll do a post about your projects.

For Halloween Gizmodo sponsored a costume contest. This year’s theme was “Robots Turn on Humans.” You’ll definitely want to check out the contest results and the clever and funny costumes.

Did you spot any great costumes this year? Tell us about them in the comments.

Don’t forget that the 2008 RoboGames are going on THIS WEEKEND in San Franciso, CA. If you’re in the SF area, you should definitely stop by. For the poor souls that can’t make it, you can follow some of the goings-on via the RoboGames twitter. You can also keep an eye on the Flickr tag, ‘robogames’ for some neat photos. Oh, and don’t forget YouTube!

Here’s a comprehensive list of all of the events.

I’m off to go mope in sadness.

Instructables and RoboGames have teamed up to create a robot building contest. The task is to design and document one specific aspect of your robot.



The grand prize is a trip to the 2009 RoboGames, with the flight and hotel room included. 2nd place winner will receive a RoboPhilo Walking Android kit, and the 3rd place entry will get tons of cool robot schwag.

Entries are judged based on six categories: Locomotion, Manipulators, Brain, Sensors, Asthetics, and "Reuse and Recycling". The deadline for entries is June 29, 2008. Send us a link to your projects in the comments!



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